Which MLB Teams Got the Most for Their Money in 2024?

Which MLB Teams Got the Most for Their Money in 2024?

The 2024 regular season has come to a close, and the Twins were Squidward-Window-Meme-ing while their AL Central foes were running around having fun (briefly, anyway) in the postseason (besides the White Sox, of course). After the most successful Twins postseason in over two decades in 2023, we’re all aware of the Pohlad penny pinching that shot fan morale out of the sky. But how many payroll dollars did they spend on each win in 2024?

Explaining $/W

$/W really doesn’t take much explaining- you simply take a team’s payroll, divide it by the number of wins they had in 2024, and voila, you’ve got the payroll dollars spent on each win. This is something I first looked into way back in 2019, and is an interesting (if not very insightful) way to measure front-office efficiency. All payroll numbers are from Spotrac.com’s Total Payroll Allocations, rounded to the nearest hundred thousand.

Limitations

What I found before is that teams with the largest payrolls are generally inefficient by this measure. There are only 162 games in a season, and no team has ever won more than 116 of those games, which imposes a reasonable limit on the number of games a team can possibly win. I expect to find this to be especially true this year, as no teams won over 100 games for the first time since 2014. On the flip side, in 2019 I found that some of the worst teams in the league were relatively efficient- they weren’t winning much, but they were paying even less.

2024 MLB $/W

The chart below is laid out in descending order of total payroll. Check it out:

General Takeaways

The average number of wins was 81, which is the case every year in MLB due to the nature of the schedule. Compared to 2019, average payroll spend is up about $30 million, and it logically follows that, on average, more dollars were spent on wins. You’ll notice that the biggest spenders, even with successful seasons, posted some of the highest $/W figures. You may also notice that the White Sox found themselves with one of the three highest $/W numbers, despite having the 18th-ranked payroll- that’s what historically bad looks like.

Having a high payroll paid off in 2024, as the six highest teams by total payroll made the playoffs, although only three of them are still dancing as of today (MLB playoffs are notoriously random). What’s more interesting is that five playoff teams- nearly half the field- were in the bottom third in payroll.

What Does This Tell Us About the Twins?

Sinking Spending

In 2019, the Twins spent nearly $125 million on payroll. The payroll was only $7 million higher in 2024, while the league’s average payroll has risen $30 million in that time. We did see that a number of teams with lower payrolls than the Twins found success in 2024, so it’s not a death knell, but it definitely does not help matters. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Pohlads.

How to Succeed with a Small Payroll

Looking at the teams that made the playoffs with smaller payrolls than the Twins, we can see a trend. These teams are mostly led by young, cost-controlled talent, such as Jackson Chourio, Adley Rutschman, or Riley Greene. A few of them boast a Cy Young contender like Corbin Burnes, Emmanuel Clase, Tarik Skubal, or Seth Lugo. Most of them have built dominant bullpens, and there are some MVP-caliber players sprinkled among them (Bobby Witt Jr., Jose Ramirez, Gunnar Henderson). These teams all have young studs that have been supplemented with one or two veteran stars. The Twins, in theory, have this kind of roster construction- but their veteran stars are consistently unhealthy, and their “young studs” are consistently inconsistent. They certainly did not have a dominant bullpen this year, either.

Conclusions

1. The Twins splurged on the wrong stars for seeking cheap success. Hopefully this isn’t a big issue with potential new ownership, but if the owners do insist on trying to win with a bottom-half payroll, they need the few big contracts they ink to stay healthy. Carlos Correa has been terrific, but relying on him and Byron Buxton to carry the team is not a winning strategy- they simply miss too much time.
2. For as much hype as there has been around many Twins prospects over the past 10 years, they have failed to develop any of them into true MVP and Cy Young candidates like Gunnar Henderson, Bobby Witt Jr., and Tarik Skubal. Royce Lewis has shown flashes, but his dismal performance during the 2024 stretch run has me worried.
3. If the back end of the starting rotation is going to continue to be duct-taped together from scrap heap free agents and over-performing middle-grade prospects, the bullpen better be excellent. Griffin Jax was incredible this year, and Jhoan Duran is Jhoan Duran, but there was not even one more arm in the bullpen that was trustworthy in leverage situations- and a couple of them were truly the most putrid relievers I’ve ever watched.

All in all, for the Twins to be successful with a bottom-third payroll, they don’t need promising young talent- they need All-Star young talent. They need to hit on bargain-bin signings and develop a better bullpen. And they need the veteran stars to stay healthy.

I like their odds better with a bigger payroll! Here’s hoping the next owners are willing to pony up.